PPP Government leaders targeted

Aug 26, 2024 Features / Columnists, News, The GHK Lall Column

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Hard truths…

Kaieteur News – I note the caption titled, “Jagdeo warns citizens not to fall prey of online scam falsely using prominent figures “(KN< August 24,2024).  The slender restraints of truth and discipline, of honesty and decency, have collapsed in this country.  When does this madness stop?  Who is there in the PPP Government to put a stop to these crimes, drop the perps dead in their tracks?  I suppose that, given where Guyana is now and is readying to go next year, this is just the beginning.  Still, there are a handful of positions I wish to place before all of my fellow citizens, starting with Dr. Jagdeo.

I regret that this false association, false accusation, false assertion, has been made against President Ali, Dr. Ashni Singh, and himself.  I condemn it and jump all over it.  I repeat what I have used many channels and many offices to broadcast locally (and elsewhere).  What is being done to them now, is exactly what has been done to me repeatedly by PPP agents who work closely, I believe, with President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo.  Only more viciously.  Only more frequently.  I could say that this is payback, but have never been that kind of man, hope that I never, ever, become so.  So, when President Ali and Vice President Jagdeo and Finance chancellor Singh are vilely and wrongly smeared, I smite at that with all my might.  Though, I believe that honor and decency, principle and character, are among the vital components of life laughed at by Dr. Jagdeo, I still feel it necessary to state my standard, drive my stake in the public ground.  Knak gat knak bak and duh fuh duh nah obyah, gat deh own people.  My challenge is how to rise above all of them in Guyana; and if I can’t do that, then stay as far from them as possible.  Perhaps, Dr. Jagdeo may wish to consider that, make an intimate priority.

Then, it is acutely concerning that social media in Guyana afford this level of liberty to wage war on targets of choice and wound at will.  The cybercriminals within the PPP and PNC seemingly operate under a shroud of undetectability, and even when that is not so, viz., but a public secret, there is still the layer of either party or official immunity.  It goes without saying that the present cybercrime law is ineffective for the job that is required (on the low end), if not a barricade so porous and laughable that can be played games with, and eluded at will, in the worst-case scenarios.  Who is being protected, perpetrators or persons in need of a robust firewall?  I think that both Dr. Jagdeo and AG Nandlall are the best people to answer that question.

Incidentally, I do recall that it was Dr. Jagdeo himself who has incited his swarm of followers to take to social media and duke it out with the objects of PPP wrath.  That is, people who he finds offensive, those who are denounced by him.  Notwithstanding his cleverness for the public record of do it cleanly and do it righteously, my personal translation of Dr. Jagdeo’s call to Guyana’s version of McCarthyism is straightforward.  It was, deal with them, damn them, derail them, degrade them, demonize them, and don’t worry.  The rest will be taken of, be assured.  Apparently, the arrogance and haste in even a man as crafty as Bharat Jagdeo made him give short thrift to the law of unintended consequences.  Or that other one from physics, mathematics, and economics, the one about zero-sum outcomes.  In my own words, it is the boomerang effect: what is given out is what comes back full circle.  As all Guyana should know, the false accusation hurled against Drs. Ali, Jagdeo and Singh has nothing to do with an intended financial scam.  It is all about politics.  The art of a daub of foul smelling, pus infested, sickly colored, paint across the kisser.  Given the plans for the third or fourth quarter of next year, the local cyber horizon is going to be heavily and dangerously overcrowded.  In other words, possibly those of legendary American filmmakers Howard Hawks or Anthony Mann, ‘war break.’

Next, I put this in a broader context.  Guyana is neither America nor India, not even ‘little’ Venezuela.  We don’t have the population size, and though there is gift of space, most are still too tightly clustered and with too much familiarity about who is who and who does what.  We all know what familiarity breeds.  This is tailormade for a spark to become a wildfire, and social media is just the rumormonger and race baiter that Guyanese need so much, given its availability for political creativity and environmental battery.  The lovely part about it is that there is anonymity.  My sense is that with so much at stake, and with tactics being refined and possibly reintroduced (‘public unrest’), cyberspace could be the ‘X’ factor, as in being a catalyst for trouble.  Something needs to be done now to rein in this monster that helps us devour one another.  My concern is whether anybody is listening, cares to do anything where matters stand, given how far Guyana is gone.  President Ali and company have been victimized.  The first step in the tit for tat is now on the books.  The tat is next.  The law is innocuous, the police cybercrime fighters are in a bad place, and Guyanese of all walks are in retreat.  We either govern social media now, or it is going to govern maniacally later.

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• citizens, Dr. Ashni Singh, Guyanese, innocuous, Perhaps, President Ali

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